First Daydream
by Elise Marie
Summary: Whilst Harry is serving his first detention with Umbridge, Hermione thinks that Ron should be doing homework. What happens when she goes to find out why he isn't and what causes her mind to wander? This is 5th in "First" series. Rated M for caution only.


**Title: **First Daydream

**Book: **Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Set on page 238 whilst Harry goes off to his first detention with Umbridge.

**Spoilers: **Up until page 238 of Order of the Phoenix.

**Warnings: **None.

**Rating: **M/PG-16. Slight adult-ish theme.

**Category: **Romance/lust/angst-ish.

**Summary: **Whilst Harry is serving his first detention with Umbridge, Hermione thinks that Ron should be doing homework. What happens when she goes to find out why he isn't and what causes her mind to wander? This is 5th in the "First" series.

**Disclaimer: All characters and the universe they exist in belong to J.K Rowling and her publishers. This piece of fan-fiction was created solely for entertainment purposes and no money was exchanged. No copyright infringement was intended and the original characters, situations and plots are property of the author. This piece of fan-fiction must not be archived without the author's consent.**

**Author's Notes: **In case I forget to mention it, Ron was out practicing Quidditch hence why he's all wet. It isn't revealed at that point in the book, but it is later. This came to me after I decided that all the other "First" stories were more from Ron's POV. But what's Hermione been thinking about? The three lines in italics are from Order of the Phoenix, page 238.

X X X X X

"_And it looks like it's going to rain."_

"_What's that got to do with our homework?" said Hermione, her eyebrows raised._

"_Nothing," said Ron at once, his ears reddening._

Hermione rolled up her finished parchment and sighed in contentment to herself. She smiled, loving the feeling of finishing yet another piece of homework early. Other people thought that she was a bit mad and odd for all of the work that she did, but she enjoyed it. That was why she got up early, did some studying before breakfast, maybe a bit more at lunch and then hours of it in the evening. She had even started a form of revision, primarily at the moment just reading over her notes and essays. In a few more weeks she would start re-writing her notes and making little tests for herself. She needed to be prepared for her upcoming exams. Even despite all of the cleaning and chores that Mrs. Weasley had given her over the summer holidays, Hermione had studied, getting a head start on the upcoming school year. She had always been like this and she assumed that she always would be. Hermione was the type of girl that whenever her parents had taken her on holiday, she had taken those books designed for junior school students to help them with their maths or English skills. She had once read a Mensa book that her father had left lying around and she had been pleasantly surprised by how many questions she could answer. One Easter holiday when her family had gone away, Hermione had requested extra maths questions from her teacher. She had arrived back in school having finished the entire book and having to start one designed for the year above. None of this had ever really endeared her to other children, but she had still had people she would call friends at junior school. Her desire to study and learn had affected her friendships more since joining Hogwarts, however. The summer she received the acceptance letter, Hermione had read everything she could get her hands on, trying to learn about this new and unexplained element of her life, of her being. Maybe friendships would have been difficult for her in any senior school, not just Hogwarts. Hermione had assumed that she and other Muggle born students would have become close friends. On one of her first days she had tried to have a conversation with Dean Thomas about it; he had not really responded to her. For a while in the first year, she had felt like the female version of Neville. The other four Gryffindor boys had bonded into pairs and each were magically able. Neville was still not fully magically able. The other two Gryffindor girls were never really candidates for being Hermione's friends so she had felt like an outsider. First year had been very lonely, until a troll had stepped in to bring Hermione two best friends. In fact the only thing that ever distracted her from studying was when Harry needed something. Or that the three of them had got into some trouble, which was becoming more and more frequent the older the three of them got. That frequency coupled with an increasing workload meant that Hermione had to step up her revision campaign.

It then dawned on her that a few hours ago Ron had excused himself from the common room and had not returned. A puzzled look crossed Hermione's face as she looked around the common room, wondering if maybe he had returned but not come over to her. He sometimes did that just to avoid being pushed into doing his homework. Sometimes Hermione absolutely despaired of that boy; if only he even tried to apply himself a little bit. She could not fathom why both he and Harry always waited until the last minute. Although, she considered, if Harry's detentions continued until this late all week he would find it hard to get his homework done. Hermione realised that it was gone seven in the evening and that Ron was in deed not present in the common room. She grabbed up her finished essay so that no one else could copy from it and stood up from where she was sitting. There was that saving grace about both Ron and Harry, they each asked (sometimes begged) to look at her work. Some other Gryffindors were not quite so honourable. Walking with a determined pace, Hermione went straight to the stairs to the boys' dormitory and started up them. No one batted an eyelid at this; she would occasionally visit Harry and Ron up there. It did not happen very often during term-time, but during the holidays when the three of them had all stayed at Hogwarts it was more common. Hermione was determined to find Ron, force him to do at least a little bit of homework and then maybe discuss their problems with Fred and George.

She knew that there was no reason to launch straight in with the Fred and George problem because that would just get Ron's back up and then he would not agree to do anything for her, let alone study which would benefit himself more. Hermione really did wish that Ron would back her up as her fellow prefect. They were his brothers, which might make it difficult for him though and she sometimes thought she should give him a bit of slack. As she approached the door of the fifth year dormitory, Hermione realised that it was already pushed more than halfway open. She paused just outside of it, silently peering into the room. Just in front of his bed stood Ron, his back to her and he was half undressed. His hair appeared to be wet and he was running a towel through it, trying to dry it. Hermione could only assume that he had been outside in the rain. She had no idea why he would have been. Her eyes drifted to the window where rain was still gently hitting the pane of glass. It was there that Hermione's eyes were drawn to a full length mirror in which she could see Ron's reflection as he dried himself. Ron was too busy looking down at something on his bed to notice that she was in the doorway or that she could see his reflection. He was standing next to his bed, trousers on, but no shirt or top on at all.

Hermione watched him continue to slowly ruffle his hair with the towel, but he seemed to be heavily concentrating on whatever was on his bed and not too focused on the job at hand. She could not help, but study his naked back. Internally, Hermione tried to argue to herself that it was because of her love of knowledge and the desire to study, to learn about everything. His back was quite pale, slightly lighter in shade than his face and arms, the usual body parts to which Hermione was accustomed to seeing. He probably did not tan very well because of his colouring and they had both spent the summer cooped up inside of Grimmauld Place rather than lazing on the grass surrounding the Burrow. This new expanse of skin Hermione was seeing was nothing like the rest of him. This new exposed body part was so very different to what Hermione considered normal. Even from her distance, Hermione could see a splattering of light brown freckles across his back. Freckles were genetic and, therefore random, but this did not stop Hermione wondering what image they could form if she were to join them up like a dot to dot puzzle. Hermione suddenly found herself wishing that she had an eidetic memory, one in which she could take a mental photograph of his freckly back and then daydream on them at any point she desired. Maybe they formed a constellation, or letters of the alphabet, or scientific symbols, or a night sky filled with fireworks. Maybe each one would look like a tiny teardrop up close, or maybe that was because there were also tiny drops of water that he had not yet dried off. It would be like staring up at a sunny sky and making objects out of the clouds. What could Hermione make out of Ron's freckles?

She could not prevent herself from studying his back from her secret position, the way that his muscles moved together as he moved his arms around his head. Her eyes followed a line down from his neck, along his trapezius and down the external oblique muscles. His muscles looked very strong and firm, almost impossibly strong. Had all of the summer cleaning strengthened his upper body and back, Hermione wondered, absently biting her lower lip gently. The journey her eyes were making stopped at the waistband of his trousers and his back was soon obscured from her view as he moved the towel to dry it. Ron shifted slightly, still with his back to Hermione and still unaware of her presence. She could not resist the opportunity given to her to now study his front reflection and continue learning so much more about the male anatomy than she could ever glean from book alone. His pectoral and abdominal muscles looked different to what she had ever expected. Across his chest there was a slight dusting of red hair. It was not quite as shocking red as that on his head, this hair blended more with his paler skin tone. His clothes did no justice to the body he kept hidden underneath them. Even despite all of the time they had spent together outside of a school environment, Hermione would never have imagined that he looked quite this fit and manly underneath his robes. She was still curious as to when his body had turned into this, when exactly his body had grown up and how she had missed it. Maybe it was his hormones and he was growing into his body. Hermione was convinced that her own physical growing up was obvious to everyone else and yet she had never considered that his body could have been changing too. She had assumed that because he was oblivious to her changes that he must not have been having any, but he had. Ron Weasley was no longer a child, no longer a boy.

As this thought flooded her brain, the blood vessels in Hermione's cheeks flooded with blood and her capillaries dilated. The blush crept up from her neck all the way through her cheeks and to her ears causing her to suddenly feel incredibly hot. Her stomach did an odd sort of flip flop within her torso, causing an almost nauseous like feeling.

"Hermione?"

Hermione shifted her eyes to meet his in the mirror and saw Ron staring back at her through the reflection. She started to blink rapidly and her normally high functioning brain seemed to have lost its connection to her mouth. Ron turned away from the mirror and his bed to face Hermione as he hastily pulled on a plain black t-shirt. The motion ruffled his half dry hair, which did not help Hermione's brain to mouth communication problem.

"Hermione?" he questioned again after there was no response.

With his body now fully covered, the fog in Hermione's brain started to clear. She did continue to blink rapidly, unsure of what to say she had been doing there.

"Hermione, are you okay?" he asked, starting to make a step towards her.

He sounded so concerned, but Hermione did not think that she could cope with any sort of proximity from him right now. "I'm fine." Her brief sentence came out a lot snappier than she had intended, but she often found that in normal situations. Her brain was still having problems forming coherent sentences despite her normal eloquence.

He stopped moving towards her, remaining near to his bed. "What are you doing up here then? How long have you been standing there?"

"What?" she questioned. She could not explain why she was feeling like this, why she was reacting in this way to him. "Why would I have been standing here for a while? I only just got here." She hoped to sound angry and affronted rather than defensive.

"Well, excuse me," he replied with a hint of annoyance in his voice, "but you're the one just standing there while I was… half… you know."

She had sounded angry to him then, Hermione was pleased with this achievement. "Grow up, Ron. I was not just standing there watching you or anything. And you can say that you were half dressed, there's no need to be embarrassed in saying that." She hoped that her blushing had ceased and that Ron could not tell that she was lying, embarrassed and some other feeling that she could not quite give a name to. Hermione had no idea why she was looking at him like this or what the un-named feeling was. Was it lust? Was it sexual attraction? She wondered to herself and then shook her head, trying to shake those thoughts physically from her mind.

"Well then, what are you doing up here?" Hermione narrowed her eyes at Ron, trying to gauge his mood and tone. He sounded angry with her, which was what she was attempting to do. She needed them to bicker, to maybe even have a full on argument as long as it got her mind away from these thoughts. She tried in that moment to convince herself that the bickering and arguments were both signs that she and Ron hated each other, anything the polar opposite of sexual attraction and lust.

"I…" she stumbled over her own excuse. "Where have you been?" she blurted out. On the spot, Hermione had decided that it was better to question him rather than be questioned. At least until she could figure out what to say to him. The bickering, arguments, dislike and anger were signs of two very stubborn people attempting to maintain a friendship for their mutual friend, Harry. Or was it a sign of passion and sexual attraction? Was she sexually attracted to Ronald Weasley? Was that why she was so incoherent, so flushed and now saw him in this new light?

"I've been…" he paused, fumbling with something behind his back. It was whatever he had been reading whilst drying himself. Normally, Hermione's curiosity would have been piqued by this secretive behaviour, but right now her brain was barely handling breathing which was an autonomic process. "Hang on a second," he argued back, "answer my question first!"

"I…" she paused in her explanation. She had still not come up with what to say for worrying that he knew she had been standing there watching him and practically drooling. Maybe she should tell him the truth? "We need to talk," she found herself saying.

"About?"

Was this why she had freaked out so much when he had walked in on her in the shower? Was she lusting after one of her closest friends? Was this why they bickered so much, because she was attracted to him? Hermione's breathing rate increased and she could feel her pulse thump loudly around her body. The heat was rising again and she knew that she was blushing once more. Or was it all just because there were too many hormones flying around? Maybe their bickering was because of their mutual stubbornness. Maybe she had freaked out in the shower because he was an insensitive teenager driven by his hormones. Maybe she was only acting like this because of her own raging hormones.

"Fred and George," she replied. She was not going to be driven by her hormones.

X X X X X

The End.


End file.
